Microsoft Bing Replaces Google In AOL Partnership

According to the announcement made by Microsoft, the company will be handing over a part of its display advertising business to AOL. AOL, which is owned by Verizon, will have Bing as its default search engine and not Google. The switch is scheduled to take place in January 2016. Just last year, Google lost a partnership with Mozilla to Yahoo, causing its largest drop since 2009 in search market share. So, this is pretty big news for Google.

Right now, Google is the default search engine for Apple’s Safari but rumors suggest that Apple too, could drop it for Bing or Yahoo. This certainly is not all that gloomy for the search engine giant. However, given that Google declined to comment when Business Insider reached out to it, it is unclear whether or not the company has made a bid to renew the partnership.

The fact that Google must pay a percentage of the revenue generated from offering search on AOL’s site, must have discouraged the company to renew the partnership. Going by Q1 of this year, the revenue amount AOL made from its search properties is $116.4 million. Experts with knowledge of the situation indicated that from the AOL deal, Google would have made only tens of millions. Now compare that with the $11.93 billion in search revenue that Google made from its websites. Hopefully, Google is not taking the blow too seriously.